Pakistan’s Spy Agency Picking the Wrong Fight: Jeffrey Goldberg

Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The Pakistani military and its spy
agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, have an
expansive menu of options before them in their endless campaign
to subvert democracy.

And subverting democracy (as opposed to, say, winning wars
against India, or helping the U.S. defeat the Haqqani terrorist
network in Afghanistan) is the real specialty of Pakistan’s
military.

On many occasions, the intelligence service, known as the
ISI, achieves its goals through sheer brutality. Such was the
case in the beating death of Saleem Shahzad, a Pakistani
investigative journalist, in May. His murder was sanctioned by
the ISI, according to Admiral Mike Mullen, the just-retired
chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. In a recent article
in the Atlantic, Marc Ambinder and I reported that U.S.
officials saw intelligence showing that officials in the office
of General Ashfaq Kayani, the head of Pakistan’s army (and the
most powerful man in a country ostensibly led by a civilian
president), ordered the head of the ISI to “take care of the
problem” posed by Shahzad. His body was soon found on the bank
of a canal.

On other occasions, the ISI executes its mission with
slightly more politesse. Such is the case in a controversy now
raging around the alleged activities of the Pakistani ambassador
to the U.S., Husain Haqqani. He stands accused of something akin
to treason for allegedly trying to enlist American help to
undermine the Pakistani military’s hold on the country’s elected
government.

An Absurd Campaign

Haqqani (no relation to the Haqqanis of terrorism fame) has
long been known as a pro-democracy activist and a critic of the
army’s meddling in Pakistan’s civilian affairs. As a scholar (he
was a professor at Boston University before taking his current
post), he wrote the definitive book on the Pakistani military’s
unholy alliance with jihadists, “Pakistan: Between Mosque and
Military.” Haqqani was appointed ambassador to the U.S. in 2008
over the objections of the ISI, which has been gunning for him
ever since. This is an absurd campaign for the ISI to wage:
Haqqani is one of the few Pakistani officials who have any
credibility in Washington, and he has carried water for the ISI
numerous times. Self-destructive behavior, however, is also an
ISI specialty.

Last month, the Financial Times published an op-ed article
by Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American businessman. In it, Ijaz
claimed that he had helped deliver a memo, ostensibly on behalf
of partisans of President Asif Ali Zardari, to Mullen, asking
the chairman to help curtail the Pakistani military’s power in
politics. (Mullen later said he ignored it.) The article
intimated that Haqqani was behind the memo.

Ijaz keeps turning up in the most unlikely places. In the
1990s, he has said, he was involved in discussions in which the
Sudanese government offered to deliver Osama bin Laden to
justice, a claim denied by Clinton administration officials. In
2006, he suggested that he knew of evidence that Iran had
already produced a nuclear weapon.

But the ISI apparently sees him as very credible. And they
found in his op-ed a chance to move against Haqqani. The spy
agency quickly fomented an anti-Haqqani campaign among the more
pliant of Pakistan’s newspapers (the ISI is also known to keep
journalists directly on its payroll, which is a timesaver for
its media-manipulation department), and Zardari was forced to
recall Haqqani to Islamabad. Haqqani denies drafting the memo,
and has already offered to resign, in order to protect
Pakistan’s civilian president.

Some Obvious Questions

Like many people who know Haqqani, I feared that he would
be met at the airport by a Benigno Aquino-type arrival ceremony,
or at the very least by ISI officers more interested in
interrogation than explanation. But Haqqani, with whom I e-mailed several times in the past few days, seemed to be handling
the pressure coolly: At one point this weekend he wrote,
“Someone’s game plan was to scare me and my President into
submission without a fight.”

He also raised some obvious questions about Ijaz and his
motivations. Ijaz says he is a critic of the ISI and claims to
be opposed to military rule in Pakistan. Yet, according to
reports in the Pakistani press, he recently met with General
Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of the ISI, and turned over his
BlackBerry.

Ijaz’s behavior suggests that he is either an epically
erratic operator or someone who from the outset was attempting
to subvert Haqqani.

It’s not at all clear how this scandal (known as “Memogate”
in the obsessed Pakistani press) will end, but if it results in
Haqqani’s removal as ambassador, it would be a minor tragedy for
an already tragic country. Military rule has brought Pakistan
nothing but violence, stagnation and political repression. Many
Pakistanis see the Haqqani network -- the pro-Taliban terrorists
who are killing American troops -- as a more serious threat than
a pro-democracy academic. But as long as the military and the
ISI are in charge of Pakistan, the wrong Haqqanis will be
ascendant.

(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist and a
national correspondent for the Atlantic. The opinions expressed
are his own.)